


When Sisyphus Stopped

by bakedgoldfish



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Episode: s04e23 25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-14
Updated: 2005-03-14
Packaged: 2019-05-15 05:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14784695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakedgoldfish/pseuds/bakedgoldfish
Summary: Ron Butterfield, and what he'd never say out loud.





	When Sisyphus Stopped

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**When Sisyphus Stopped**

**by: Baked Goldfish**

**Character(s):** Ron Butterfield  
**Rating:** TEEN  
**Disclaimer:** Aaron Sorkin doesn't own them, but neither do I.  Don't sue me, no money's being made, no copyright infringement intended.  
**Summary:** Ron Butterfield, and what he'd never say out loud.  
**Spoiler:** Up through 25.  


He's not sure how he ended up running behind Leo McGarry instead of in front, but there he is, behind a guy who in all honesty shouldn't have been able to run that fast.  Doesn't quite understand how that happened; they'd been walking a second before, and then bam.  Sprinting down the portico, and he was at least ten feet behind and completely unable to catch up to a guy seven years older and more attuned to wingback chairs than pounding the pavement.  For all his training, for every morning he gets up and runs five miles at dawn, trying to outrun the sun itself, nothing could have prepared him to outrun the family of the victim.  Never really realized that until he found himself trailing Leo fucking McGarry, of all people. 

And he's an outsider as the chief of staff bangs on the bedroom door, an outsider as McGarry breathes an ineffectually quiet, "Abbey, Jed," with wide eyes and a face more open than he'd ever seen - more open than he'd seen after Rosslyn, and he hadn't even thought that was possible.  He's an outsider as he steps up behind McGarry and the President walks up to them.  There are only four reasons he'd be up there at this time of night, meeting with them at some point after ten thirty.  Four reasons, and one's in Baltimore, two are probably nearly asleep in New Hampshire, and the fourth.  The fourth reason. 

President Bartlet's still in shirtsleeves and dress slacks and a tie.  Doctor Bartlet isn't noticing them while she talks with some guests, and President Bartlet quietly asks, "What is it?" 

He'd told Leo McGarry that the chief of staff was traditionally the first to know.  He had received the call from Agent Davis, and he had pulled out his cell phone and called home.  He had listened to the sound of his boy sleeping for a good three seconds as he ran to the Situation Room.  It wasn't too far between his office and that room, and the chief of staff had been the first to know after all.  He'd stood outside the door for the ten longest seconds of his life for the chief of staff to be the first to know.  Right now, talking furtively to President Bartlet, McGarry looks like he wants to pass out, throw up, gather the First Family up in his arms, and kill someone all at once.  They're stopped just inside the door. 

And he's familiar with the story of Sisyphus, even if he never really saw it as a pure tragedy.  The way he always read it: by returning to the bottom of the mountain, Sisyphus finds his own success over the gods.  Knowing his fate and still going at it - this is how Sisyphus beats the ones who'd cursed him in the first place.  He's familiar with the idea, the idea of essentially giving the finger to the fate-makers by accepting defeat as something wholly other than defeat, when life gives you lemons and all that.  Torment after torment, the same torment every time at that, and Sisyphus knows it will never end, but he faces it all the same.  Roll the damn rock up the hill, and watch it roll back down.  Every year he's worked with President Bartlet, four years out of his eighteen in the Secret Service, he's seen a better guy than Sisyphus doing a very similar task, most days.  Always rising above, even if he doesn't always win.  Illegitimi non carborundum, by way of taking all the crap anyone threw his way and overcoming it.  He starts talking, but isn't quite sure what he's saying.  He hears something hit the floor, and the President turns away for a moment. 

"Ron?" the President asks.  Doctor Bartlet has stepped up beside her husband, both with that same look of abject terror on their faces, and the three couples whose information Ron took earlier that day look on in confusion.  Four reasons for him to be standing there, and the guests have probably already ruled out three.  He wonders, idly in that moment of split second hesitation, how she's going to take the news when it really, really hits her.  She'd been teasing the President for worrying so much about Zoey's imminent departure, poking fun at the father losing his baby daughter to handsome French royalty for a good week or so at least, and he can't help but wonder if she'll feel some twisted, unwarranted guilt over that.  It's only been a second since Leo McGarry, fifteen feet in front of him and breathing hard, had banged on their door, only a second since he'd loomed into their view at the wrong time of night, at the wrong day of the year. 

It's only been a second, and anyone in the room who hadn't heard him has figured it out anyway, he's sure of it.  "Sir, ma'am," he begins, and he wonders if he's keeping the emotion out of his voice the way he'd been taught to.  "There's-" 

"Oh God," he hears the First Lady say.  The President is still staring at him, fear and fury mixing in his eyes and in his stance as McGarry takes a halting step towards them.  He thinks he sees the President mouth the word, "No," and there's such emotion in the silence that he almost doesn't want to say a damn thing. 

"We're at black," he repeats for her, not bothering with the full explanations just yet.  They probably don't know what the phrase means, but they can figure it out.  They already have, before he even began to say anything.  No need to insult their intelligences; they probably knew what was coming the moment they saw McGarry's face, and the moment they saw him behind McGarry with his hawk-eyes staring at them as blank as they pleased.  Get to the point first, then explain.  "There's an agent dead at the scene.  We've shut down the club and we're in the process of closing down the city." 

The fury melts away in President Bartlet's eyes.  And in the panic that takes its place, in the half-second when he realizes there's bourbon on his shoes and photographs on the floor, he himself has a moment of gut-clenching apprehension; for the longest flicker of a moment, he sees Sisyphus give up. 

-end- 


End file.
